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Definition of accessory after the fact in English:

accessory after the fact

phrase

A person who knowingly aids someone who has committed an arrestable offence.

‘That is why under our [that is, US] Federal Law all distinctions between accomplices, between accessories before the fact and accessories after the fact, have been completely eliminated.’

‘It could not have been found by the jury on the balance of probabilities that Verebes was a principal or accessory before the fact to the applicant's offending.’

‘Not guilty of being an accessory after the fact?’

‘Those who knowingly harbor - that is shelter, protect, hide, or conceal these war criminals from being caught - in effect become accessories after the fact.’

‘On the weekend before I left, Mark was arrested for the murders and his wife was arrested as an accessory after the fact.’

‘Wasn't everyone in that dressing room therefore guilty by association - ‘accessories before the fact’ as lawyers might say?’

‘Justice Benjamin also did not entertain a lesser charge of accessory after the fact, which he said was introduced too late in the proceedings.’

‘One was, firstly, whether the offender or the accused was indeed a primary offender; secondly, whether he was guilty of being an accessory after the fact.’

‘Though Crippen was hanged for his wife's murder, Ethel's prosecution as an accessory after the fact in a subsequent trial was half-hearted and resulted in her acquittal.’

‘McConnell was arrested as an accessory to murder after the fact.’

‘Did they want them to be accessories after the fact?’

‘Well, he is liable, as was pointed out, to a number of other offences: accessory after the fact, destroying a motor car, theft of a motor car and various others - you could throw the book at him for the other offences.’

‘He said: ‘A wife could not be convicted of being an accessory after the fact for a felony committed by her husband.’’

‘McConnell's wife was later arrested as an accessory after the fact.’

‘Jay is very shocked, but now he's implicated - an accessory before the fact - and he has no option but to talk it out with Ben.’

‘His live-in girlfriend was charged as an accessory after the fact to murder.’

‘I was charged as an accessory before the fact because of what he told me.’

‘As the Attorney General's Office must be well aware, and the report confirms, the Church has been an accessory after the fact for decades and still is.’

‘I didn't reveal my earlier transgressions so as not to make him an accessory after the fact.’

‘Those who aided the commission of crime but were not present at the scene of the crime were regarded as accessories before the fact or principals in the third degree.’